6 on the court
 

Question for the group.
We had a disagreement at our Association meeting last night and I would like the group's input. Essentially, is there a definition for participating?

10.1.6 says, "A team shall not:
Have more than five team players participating simultaneously."

Situation: Team B breaks timeout huddle and plays with 6 but officials do not notice and then the ball goes out of bounds. Officials now notice 6 players on the floor. Can player for team B leave the floor without penalty because he/she is not currently participating during a dead ball? Or, because no player has come on the court during the dead ball, can we assume there were 6 players during the last live ball and thus assess a technical foul?

1. An official has to have knowledge that there were six during the live ball in order to penalize.

2. I see that an editorial change was made to the rule without announcing it. It is worse now.

I had this happen earlier in the year. It was partially my fault, I was the Lead and ran the wrong way thinking we were going that way out of timeout. Instead of counting players, I was hustling to the other end of the court. Of course out of the timeout we had a pass that was thrown towards the baseline where two players jumped for it and deflected it out of bounds. In the process of stopping the clock and signaling direction, apparently a player ran off. My partner missed the player running off. The coach for the team with 5 started barking, so I went over to my partner to discuss what he saw. He said he never saw the 6th player.

Later on, the scorekeeper told me he saw it. Would you ever consult with the scorekeeper on a situation like this to make your decision?

Having the table crew observe this infraction is not enough to penalize it. There is a case book play in which the table crew reports a team having six on the court to the officials after the expiration of time and the ruling is that the infraction cannot be penalized because the game officials did not observe it while being violated.